Buster Books becomes 10th publisher to agree to #LetBooksBeBooks

January 27, 2016

We are pleased to say that UK children’s books publisher, Buster Books, an imprint of Michael O’Mara, has become the tenth publisher since our campaign began to ditch gendered book titles and agree to “let books be books”.

Buster Books was one of the three named publishers in the Let Books Be Books petition launched almost two years ago on World Book Day. While Usborne and Parragon responded almost immediately and agreed to stop publishing the titles, the other two named publishers, Buster Books and Igloo Books, have been slower to respond favourably to the campaign and its supporters.

Today, after Let Toys Be Toys repeated their ask on Twitter:

The campaigners were delighted to see this statement from Buster Books:

Campaigner Tessa Trabue welcomed the news: “It’s great that Buster Books has finally agreed to stop labelling their books. We believe that labelling books as for ‘boys’ or ‘girls’ serves no positive purpose, and only limits children’s interests and choices. In work the campaign has recently done with children, these Buster Books titles have been mentioned negatively time and time again, so we are delighted we can now tell them that the books will no longer be published with these limiting labels.”

John Dougherty, children’s author and Chair of the Society of Authors’ Children’s Writers and illustrators Group said: “The idea of ‘books for boys’ or ‘books for girls’ has become a pernicious way of reinforcing harmful gender stereotypes from an early age. I’m absolutely delighted to hear that Buster Books has committed to taking a stand in favour of genuine choice for children.”

For further details about Let Toys Be Toys and the #LetBooksBeBooks campaign, please email lettoysbetoys@gmail.com.